General officers

Military Images, May/Jun 2003

Initially only brigadier generals were authorized in the Confederate Army. They wore the standard uniform with buff collars and cuffs (Patrick Cleburne joked that he did so well as a Confederate general because during his service as an enlisted man in the British Army he had learned how to keep buff uniform facings clean).

They were further distinguished by four rows of gold lace forming an Austrian knot on each sleeve and their button arrangement. They were to wear two rows of buttons, eight in each row, placed in pairs. However, when additional ranks were added, many generals rearranged their buttons, to follow the practice in the prewar U.S. Army. Therefore, major generals often wore nine buttons placed in sets of threes on their coats.

Although the three stars, the center one larger, within a wreath was the regulation general's insignia, Robert E. Lee and so many other general officers simply wore three equal-sized stars on their collars that such (the early rank badge, after all) must have been considered an acceptable variation to the regulation insignia of June 1861.

Generals were also authorized four stripes of gold lace on their dark blue kepis as well as buff silk sashes worn around the waist.